GRAMATICA, Antiveduto - b. ~1571 Roma, d. 1626 Roma - WGA

GRAMATICA, Antiveduto

(b. ~1571 Roma, d. 1626 Roma)

Italian painter active mainly in Rome. According to Giovanni Baglione, the artist was given the name Antiveduto (“foreseen”) because his father had a premonition that he would be soon born during a journey between his native Siena and Rome. It was in Rome that Antiveduto was baptised, raised and based his career. His apprenticeship with the Perugian artist Giovanni Domenico Angelini introduced him to small-scale works, mostly on copper. He gained the nickname “gran Capocciante” because he specialised in painting heads of famous men. A decade later, in 1591, Antiveduto set up as an independent artist. Giovan Pietro Bellori noted that Caravaggio worked for some months in his studio. Both artists were to enjoy the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte and the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani.

Gramatica’s earliest surviving public commission, an old-fashioned configuration depicting Christ the Saviour with Sts Stanislaus of Krakow, Adalbert of Prague and Hyacinth Odrowaz, was painted for the high altar San Stanislau dei Polacchi. Very few works are definitely attributable to him. Archetypal heads, rhetorical hand gestures and contrasting lights and darks characterise his paintings. Datable c. 1619, early biographers ascribe to him The Dream of St Romuald painted for the high altar of the Eremo dei Camaldolesi in Frascati. Antiveduto painted many works for private clients in Rome and beyond, particularly in Spain.

Characterized by Giulio Mancini as most zealous in his profession, Antiveduto began his association with the Accademia di San Luca in 1593, attaining the highest office of “principe” in 1624. Shortly after this, however, he became embroiled in scandal. The machinations of his enemy Tommaso Salini over his attempt to sell of the Accademia’s altarpiece by Raphael brought about his demotion.

Denial of St Peter

This painting encompasses all the Caravaggesque qualities that came to define Antiveduto’s dramatic and realist output of work. The sharp light that falls across the maid, the distinct gesturing of the protagonists, and the precise detail with which the fabrics, the faces and the hands are rendered, are in the distinctive style of Antiveduto.

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Mary Magdalene at the Tomb

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Saints Praxedes and Pudentiana

Praxedes was a Roman maiden, the sister of Pudentiana. When the Emperor Marcus Antoninus was hunting down Christians, they sought them out to relieve them with money, care, comfort and every charitable aid. The sisters were buried in the Catacomb of Priscilla.

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St Cecilia with Two Angels

St Cecilia is a Christian saint and virgin martyr believed to have lived in the 2nd or 3rd century. She is the patron saint of music, her attribute being the organ. She is often represented with other musical instruments.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Girolamo Frescobaldi: Ricercar No. 8

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The Theorbo Player

Like many Carraveggesque works, The Theorbo Player was once attributed to the master himself, but it is now recognised as one of the masterpieces of Antiveduto Gramatica. In the painting, a musician, looking over his left shoulder, is seated in front of a table upon which a Spanish guitar, tambourine and musical score rest. The rich density of the palette and the keen rendering of the instruments reflect Caravaggio’s naturalism, while the composition itself is obviously based directly on his Lute Player. Gramatica’s painting is a fragment of a larger Concert (known through photographs of a copy, now lost), in which the theorbo player turns towards a woman playing the harpsichord and a young boy playing the flute. The musicians’ intense concentration and sideways glances become clear once their original context within the larger Concert is understood. There are clear traces of overpaint on the left-hand side of the Turin picture, covering the area where the woman’s shoulder and arm once were.

A painting of a concert ‘by the hand of Antiveduto’ is listed in the 1627 inventory of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte’s collection. The dimensions given in the inventory correspond to those of the lost copy, making it probable that the Turin picture was cut from Cardinal Del Monte’s Concert. The picture has been placed early in Gramatica’s career, around 1605. However, the combination of a theorbo and Spanish guitar suggest that the picture should be dated in the second decade of the seventeenth century, after these two instruments had become more fashionable.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 14 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Concerto for harp, lute and theorbo in B flat major

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Virgin and Child

This is an autograph variant of a smaller composition.

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